Playlists
Fadenza keeps up to sixty-four playlists. You name them and you fill them; nothing fills them for you, and there is no library behind them to draw from.
The Queue is one of them
The first list is called the Queue and it is permanent. You cannot rename it, you cannot delete it, and it always sits at the top of the sidebar.
It is where audio lands when it arrives without you choosing a destination — a watched folder
picking up a new file, a fadenza:// URL, the local HTTP API or an MCP command. Everything
scripted addresses the Queue and nothing else, which is why none of those interfaces needs a way to
name a playlist.
Audio you hand over yourself goes where you put it: a drop on the window or ⌘O lands in the list
you are looking at, and a drop onto a sidebar row lands in that row’s list.
What you are looking at, and what is playing
These are allowed to differ, and keeping them separate is deliberate. You can browse one list while another plays. Next, Previous, shuffle and repeat follow the playing list, not the one on screen — so scrolling through your other playlists mid-album changes nothing about what happens when the track ends.
There is always a playing list to begin with — the Queue, from launch — so shuffle and repeat address the Queue until something else plays, even while you are looking at another list. The playing list goes away only when you delete it, or move its playing row into another list; then shuffle and repeat act on the one you are looking at, because a toggle that did nothing would be worse than one with a defensible target.
Removing rows with ⌘⌫ acts on the list you are looking at, because that is the one under
your cursor.
Limits
- Sixty-four playlists, including the Queue.
- Names are 1 to 100 characters once surrounding spaces are trimmed.
- Names do not have to be unique. Two lists called “New” are your business.
The per-import limits are unchanged and apply per import, not per playlist: folders are read 32 levels deep and 20,000 files at a time.
Sorting is per playlist
Each list remembers its own sort column, its own direction and its own grouping. Sorting one does not disturb another. What every list shares is the column layout itself — which columns are visible, how wide, in what order — because that is a property of how you like tables, not of any one playlist.
Ratings are shared
A rating belongs to the file, not to the row. The same track in three playlists is the same four stars in all three, and it keeps them if you remove it from all three and add it back later. See the queue for how to set one.
Moving tracks between lists
Drag a selection out of the table onto a sidebar row to copy it into that playlist. Hold ⌘ while you drag to move it instead — the cursor shows which one you are doing.
Tracks already in the destination are skipped. The rule is about where you dropped, not about how you chose: a drop onto the table in front of you may duplicate, because the table is its own confirmation, but a sidebar row is not on screen and you cannot see what is already in it. Dropping the same two tracks onto Dinner twice leaves two rows there, not four.
A move relocates the row rather than copying it and deleting the original, so the track that is playing is not cut off — it plays to its end. But the move detaches it: nothing follows automatically, and playback stops there until you start something.
Dropping onto the row of the list you are already looking at does nothing. The row accepts the drop and the cursor shows its badge, and then nothing changes: a copy would duplicate rows you can already see, and a move would have nowhere to go.